Postcard From Siberia

I finished quilting the center of that Blue Thistle quilt yesterday afternoon. DD#2 sets up a workstation in my office when she visits and I needed to get that project out of the way. (The Bernina Q20 is in here.) I’m thinking about how I want to quilt the borders. Those should go quickly, and then I can move the next project up to the top of the list.

The weather forecast gets more interesting every day. The high on Thursday will be -9F.

And then we get that bizarre warmup next week. Nothing like a bit of weather whiplash to keep us on our toes.

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Our latest project here has been eliminating seed oils from our diet. The Great Diet Cleanup started some years ago when I stopped buying foods containing high fructose corn syrup. Wheat and gluten went out the window after that, followed by soy. The cleaner we went, though, the more I noticed problems when eating out or eating processed foods. (Traveling can be a nightmare, which is why I prefer Airbnbs where I can cook my own breakfasts.) I can tell when I have ingested something I shouldn’t have, because my hip and knee joints will start to hurt.

Ironically, most of the food in “health food” stores is loaded with soy, seed oils, and other truly awful ingredients. I cook mostly from scratch—with lard, butter, and olive oil—but there are times when I would like to have some convenience foods. Salad dressings have been a problem. Yes, I could make my own, but either I never seem to have the time or I don’t have the ingredients. I do not like vinaigrettes, either, unless they are made by my chef friend, Anna.

I’ve been buying the Primal Kitchen brand of dressings recently. Costco carries the mayonnaise, which is made with avocado oil instead of soy. (Even the ones claiming to be made with olive oil have some soy or canola oil in them.) The Primal Kitchen dressings are made with avocado oil only. I love the Green Goddess and the Cilantro Lime. The husband likes the Italian ones.

I still miss a few foods I used to eat. Pizza is one, although I am quite fond of pizza crusts made with cauliflower and they are getting easier to find. (The problem with “gluten free” is that those products are loaded with tapioca and rice flours, which are pretty high on the carb scale.) Costco is now carrying cauliflower sandwich rounds. I bought a package of those last week. I was able to find grape jelly sans HFCS and peanut butter containing only peanuts, so I’ve been indulging in the occasional peanut butter and jelly sandwich. They are not quite the PB&J sandwiches of my childhood, but they are close enough. And they don’t make my joints hurt.

I have a theory that the reason people are flocking to special diets like keto and carnivore isn’t because those diets are necessarily better for humans—I’m not convinced they are, although I don’t deny they work for some—but because those diets are strict enough that they allow people to avoid things like soy, seed oils, gluten, and other problematic ingredients.

DD#2 and I have an appointment at my naturopath’s office on Friday to get blood tests for food sensitivities. She has an ongoing problem with eczema and I want to see if there is anything else I need to avoid. This should be interesting.